[Twinflame]

He blinked up at Antimony, his brow furrowed. "Well, that's not like him. I told him to get soil from the Overgrowth didn't I? Was I specific? I do hope he didn't run off and get some magical dirt from Un'goro or Outland or one of the Burning Legion's terrible worlds." He said this without particular concern, however, as he fished into the satchel for a ruby crystal that would focus arcane magic through another focus.

[Naunet]

Antimony had been turning the clear quartz in her hand when Dhein's words brought a flash of worry across her features. "He wouldn't--it could jeopardize the specimen's survival! We don't know how delicate its needs are, or even if different soil could alter its energetic properties..!"

[Twinflame]

"I understand why you would think he'd have to be smarter than that, and he would. Anyone would. But, you see, the thing about Aztal, regarding what he would and would not do..." Dhien stood, red gem in one hand and black gem in the other. He held his hands to either side. "Well, it's that, yes. Yes, he would do such a thing. And, you should think about that dirt being in the pot right now."

[Naunet]

Antimony released the crystal back into the sack without a second thought and spun to hurry back to the plant. She dropped to her knees in front of it, bending to push vine-like branches and twisted leaves out of the way. The shadows hiding between the branches seemed to reach out for her hands as she moved the plant, and the yellow glow of her eyes flickered as she squinted at the soil around it, trying to discern what bits were the original dry clay and what was Aztal's misguided offering. She scooped her fingers into the soil.

"I will have far more than a few choice words for that imp if he has permanently marred our venture," she spoke unhappily.

[Twinflame]

"Just don't expect it to do much good." Dhein look at the crystals in his hands, looked at the plant, and then put the red crystal away. Taking the black crystal and the darkest of the available staves, he walked across the room to a cheap table he'd placed against one wall. "He thinks he's smarter than we are, you know. The maddened little creep believes that just because he can read and write in more languages than exist on Azeroth and has memorized entire libraries on worlds that no longer even exist, that he can do better than us at anything. But then he goes and throws handfuls of magic dirt into our experiment! He's not convincing me."

[Naunet]

"All the knowledge in the universe matters little if he is lacking in even an ounce of sense," Antimony snapped, her mood souring further. She carefully scooped out what bits of darker soil she could find, setting it aside in a small pile. The shadows the settled between her fingers felt like ice, but she hardly noticed them. "And none of it will save him from me should I find all that effort to procure this specimen was for naught. Ah... I think I've gotten all of it." She pursed her lips and pushed the plant about some more to double, triple, quadruple check. "Luckily he did not think to mix it in with the soil we already had."

[Twinflame]

"Killing Aztal again would be pointless, as we'd just lose access to him and he'd come back after a little while anyway. There is a way to kill an imp, but it probably exceeds your commitment to doing so." Dhein affixed the black crystal to the dark staff, summoning a flick of Fel to his fingertips to make the dark wood curl around the stone. The so-called flick was brighter than he had intended it to be, the outside of his hand seeming to come alight with green flame, and his eyes flared. He shook his hand to put the fire out and resolved to pretend such a thing hadn't happened. "Can I trust you to craft the Holy focus?" He left the staff-and-gem on the table and turned away from it. "Would it take long?"

[Naunet]

"It will not." Antimony gave a critical eye first to the pot and then the small pile of discarded soil on the floor. After a moment, she swept the loose dirt further from the pot, as though its mere proximity could be enough to affect the plant and its potentially delicate energies.

She didn't bother telling Dhein that creating a Holy focus, while simple, was not exactly pleasant. At least for the Forsaken. She stood to retrieve one of the wooden staves and the roughly cut quartz crystal she'd examined prior. Setting the crystal into a small groove in the staff, Antimony wrapped her hand about it as though to hold it in place and set her other on the staff a few inches below that. She leaned against the staff, and the glow of her eyes flickered a brighter, whiter light for a moment as she willed Holy energy into existence. It set a fire between every bone in her hand, and in the moments she held onto the magic, it felt as though her flesh were peeling away. She hunched her shoulders and set her jaw against it.

As the Holy Light sunk from her fingers, through the crystal, and into the staff, she felt something else at the edges of her perception pushing, prodding, wriggling against her bones. It felt strange, cold, and when she let go of the staff - the newly crafted focus clattering to the floor - the sensation lingered for many long seconds. One hand shifted to grip the opposite arm loosely, and she watched the staff on the ground.

[Twinflame]

Dhien was careful with the staff he was preparing. It deserved at least that much, and more. If he remembered one thing from his early success as a Warlock, it was to respect Fel power. If he'd learned one thing from his ultimate failure, it was to respect Fel power. He knew better than most that it was impossible to master the Fel, to not be overpowered by it eventually, so he would channel only so much. Taking a small flat-tipped blade, he etched runes into the staff. These runes could harness and contain great power, but he would give them only very little. Just enough to test the plant's power. He would stay so far below the limits of power that they would not even be scraped.

If Aztal were not absent, Dhein would have asked him to go and fetch one of the books on runic magic from his study in Corin's Crossing. Where was the imp. "Aztal! Fetch something for me." He called out just in case Aztal was wisely hiding from Antimony's anger, but Aztal did not respond. Resigning himself to working from memory, a thing Dhein as reasonably sure he could do, Dhein covered the staff inch-by-inch in complicated asymmetrical shapes. They were hideous things to look at, with just enough pattern to include heinous interruptions of the systems they almost established, with sweeping shapes like the writhing of a seizing serpent or the undulation of succubus' tail.

After a great deal of work, a time that passed quickly but felt lengthy, D'hein lifted the staff and turned it in his hands, taking inventory of the runes. Proofing his work. As he did this, he found enough attention to spare to glance over at Antimony for a moment. "Do we have any idea what kind of test we can try? We can do several trials. It need not all be one single thing. Is there anything at all which the Light does that Fel and Arcane can imitate? Even something innocuous. Heat? A protection ward, maybe?"

[Naunet]

The holy energies had seared the stone into the wood, securing it as strongly as any twine or forging. Antimony's eyes flickered as she watched the crystal, light roiling just beneath its surface for several seconds before sinking into the wood. Golden-white lines glowed bright along the grain and then faded.

Flexing her hand numbly, she bent to pick up the staff again, though her grip was at first weak. "A protective spell may work. I know how to form one with Light, and I have seen arithmetic maps of arcane used to create such a thing. Do you know of a similar spell with fel energies?" She turned around towards the plant, though her gaze went first to Dhein.